Real Southern Rules: Reconsidering the Real Southern Man

We here at RSM haven’t been posting all that much of late. We could make all manner of excuses, but the fact is, we’ve had something of a crisis of faith. Thanks to the mocking words of a certain writer from The New Yorker, we’ve had to take a long, hard look at our Southernness. And we’ve come to a few conclusions. Those conclusions have led us to reconsider what exactly a Real Southern Man is.

1. Real Southern Men are not gentlemen. There is nothing to be gained from treating women with a higher degree of respect or consideration. In the interest of furthering their liberation, we will no longer be holding doors for women, helping to carry their groceries, fixing theirs cars, taking out their trash or serving them in any way that is different from the way we treat our fellow men. Many generations from now, they just might thank us for it. Many, many generations.

And speaking of our fellow men…

2. Real Southern Men are in it for themselves. There. We said it. No more of this soft, namby-pamby, “respect your fellow man” Kumbaya. We’re going to get ours, and we don’t care if you ever get yours. In fact, we’ll see to it that you don’t. The game of life is just that: a game. There can be only one winner. Let the cutthroat tactics begin.

3. Real Southern Men hate football. We made a good show of it, pretending to love this brutal, gladiatorial sport … out of sheer tradition. But the time has come to cast off the mantle of brute masculinity. Count us as devotees of badminton and table tennis from now on. See you in Rio, chumps.

4. Real Southern Men don’t drink sweet tea. Again, we tried. But sweetened drinks will be the death of America. Type two diabetes, anyone? In fact, we’re no longer drinking anything brown. It’s a sound philosophy, when you think about it.

5. Real Southern Men don’t eat grits. Grains are inherently evil. Just ask the Paleos. And grits are especially foul. They’re slimy and coarse at the same time. It’s unnatural! The only people who still eat grits and pretend to like them are racists and inbreds. I hear Hitler liked grits, too.

6. Real Southern Men don’t like guns. Furthermore, we don’t respect your constitutional rights to own one, either. It doesn’t matter that Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Madison et al codified those rights as being crucial to the fending off of tyranny. They didn’t live in our highly civilized times — times so civilized, in fact, that no one should be trusted to own guns besides the government.

What about hunting, you say? If God intended for man to hunt, he wouldn’t have invented grocery stores. It’s nothing but violence-free, factory farmed meat for us from now on.

And we don’t cook that meat on an open grill. Too primitive. It’s microwaves or nothing for us.

See? Don’t you feel more enlightened already?

Photo by RSM Wayne Franklin

6. Real Southern Men don’t go to church. We were being figurative with that mention of “God” in our last point. Real Southern Men, of course, only believe in what we can see, what can be proven. Therefore, we also no longer believe in love, respect, self-sacrifice, objective morality, the beauty of nature, etc. We can’t live forever as mindless sheep, believing whatever preachers tell us about some ancient, dusty books. We are intelligent men, capable of rational, independent thought. From now on, we’ll believe what the scientists tell us is real.

7. Real Southern Men don’t say “y’all.” It’s not a real word. Instead, we are embracing the Northern alternatives: “youse” and “youse guys.” I can feel The New Yorker liking us more already.

8. Real Southern Men don’t pull over for funeral processions. With no belief in God, no churches to make us feel guilty and no outdated notions of being respectful or a gentleman, we no longer have to interrupt our busy day just so a bunch of people we don’t know can haul a carcass across town. So, out of the way, slow pokes! We’ve got some violence-free meat to buy!

9. Real Southern Men don’t say “sir” or “ma’am.” Respect our elders? Are you kidding me? Those people are just one step away from being slow-rolling carcasses tying up traffic.

10. Real Southern Men don’t do April Fools’ Day jokes. Okay, maybe they do. Just this once. Happy April Fools’ Day, everyone!

And for the record, Real Southern Men are not fools. We just talk slow, so the Yankees can keep up.